The United States has decided not to call the overthrow of Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi a coup, which would have forced it to freeze $1.5 billion in mainly military aid, an official said Friday.

"The law does not require us to make a formal determination as to whether a coup took place, and it is not in our national interest to make such a determination," a senior administration official told Agence France Presse, in a further sign that Washington has no intention of slashing its aid to Cairo.

Syria on Friday condemned the assassination of Tunisian opposition politician Mohammed Brahmi, who was killed by a gunman outside his home near Tunis.

Brahmi, a leading opposition figure and critic of Tunisia's ruling Islamists, was shot dead in Ariana, near the Tunisian capital, on Thursday.

French authorities have released a man detained this week on suspicion of wanting to go to Syria to fight alongside Islamist rebels, a judicial source said on Friday.

The unidentified 47-year-old was arrested on Tuesday near the eastern city of Belfort but was released late Thursday after investigators found no evidence of a planned departure, the source said.

A teenage daughter of Tunisian politician Mohammed Brahmi who was gunned down in broad daylight recounted Friday how he was slain by two men in black T-shirts on a scooter.

"At around midday, we heard gunfire and my father crying with pain. We rushed out -- my brother, mother and I -- to find his body riddled with bullets at the wheel of his car parked in front of the house," a red-eyed Balkis Brahmi told Agence France Presse.

At least 150 Syrian regime forces have been killed in Khan al-Assal, a town in Aleppo province at the center of an alleged chemical weapons strike this year, monitors said Friday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said that at least 10 people were reported killed on Friday in regime shelling of the northwestern province of Idlib.

Israel is giving the EU "the cold shoulder" in the West Bank, Israeli officials told Agence France Presse on Friday, following new European guidelines banning dealings with Jewish settlements.

Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon had given instructions to Israeli officials to "freeze contacts with European Union representatives in Area C" of the West Bank, which is under full Israeli control, one official said.

Clashes broke out between supporters and opponents of ousted president Mohammed Morsi in the Cairo neighborhood of Shubra on Friday, witnesses told Agence France Presse.

The clashes erupted early in the afternoon, the witnesses said. Live footage on satellite station ONTV showed crowds throwing rocks at each other in the neighborhood.

Protests and a general strike swept Tunisia Friday after gunmen killed an opposition head with "the same gun" used to kill a colleague, as under-fire authorities pointed to al-Qaida links.

Mohammed Brahmi was gunned down with the same weapon used to kill another opposition politician, Chokri Belaid, six months earlier, Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou said.

A Franco-American photographer who had been detained in Syria since April has been freed and arrived safely in Paris this week, the French foreign ministry said.

Jonathan Alpeyrie, who works for the New York-based Polaris Images photo agency and has traveled to several conflict zones in the past, flew into the French capital on Wednesday.

Five people were killed in clashes Friday between supporters of Egypt's military and deposed president Mohammed Morsi's loyalists in Alexandria, state media reported.

Police have intervened to break up the clashes in the Mediterranean city, in which at least 72 people were injured, many with gunshot wounds, the reports said.